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Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Iran's Assad Regime

By Christopher Kozak

Key Takeaway: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime is neither sovereign nor a viable U.S. partner against ISIS and al-Qaeda. Russia and Iran have penetrated the Syrian Arab Army’s command-and-control authorities at all levels and propped up the force by providing the bulk of its offensive combat power. The pro-regime coalition cannot secure all of Syria and primarily serves as a vehicle for Moscow and Tehran’s regional power projection. Any U.S. strategy in Syria that relies on pro-regime forces will fail to destroy Salafi-Jihadists while empowering Iran and Russia.

Both
former U.S.
President Barack Obama and current U.S.
President Donald Trump have considered deeper cooperation
with Russia – and thereby Iran and Assad – against ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria. This
idea is based on two fundamental fallacies. First, Russia, Iran, and the Assad
regime cannot recapture Salafi-Jihadist safe havens and secure them over the
long-term given their severe manpower shortages and shortfalls in
command-and-control. Second, Assad is not sovereign. Iran and Russia have both
inserted themselves deep into the framework of the state. Both states aim to
entice the U.S. into actions that advance their own strategic
interests and ultimately facilitate the expulsion of the U.S. from the
Middle East.

Regime Manpower Shortage

The
Syrian Arab Army (SAA) no longer exists as a unified or coherent fighting force
capable of independently securing the entire country. Six years of defections,
desertions, and combat attrition have more than halved its pre-war combat strength
to an estimated 100,000
soldiers as of 2014 – primarily ill-equipped and poorly-trained conscripts. Only
a fraction of
these forces can reliably deploy in offensive operations – perhaps as few as 30,000-40,000
soldiers. These units largely consist of ‘elite’ forces such as the Republican
Guard, Special Forces, and Fourth Armored Division that recruit heavily among
Syrian Alawites.

The
regime struggled to overcome these structural weaknesses due to a severe
manpower shortage. The SAA intensified an indiscriminate conscription
campaign in late 2014 amidst reports that the conflict had killed as many
as one-third of
fighting-age males among Syrian Alawites. Activists reported the
conscription of underage children and prisoners into units that received less
than one week of training before battlefield deployment. Assad acknowledged
these strains in a public speech in July 2015, noting an ongoing “shortfall in
human capacity” that forced the state to “give up some areas” in order to focus
on more “important regions” in Syria.

Russia’s
intervention in Syria in September 2015 has not altered these underlying
shortfalls. Reinforcements from Russia, Iran, and Lebanese Hezbollah helped in
part to close this gap between the regime’s requirements and capabilities. The
regime nonetheless remains fragile and unable to muster sufficient forces for
major simultaneous operations. Most notably, ISIS recaptured
Palmyra in Eastern Homs Province in December 2016 and increased
its attacks against regime positions in Deir ez-Zour City while pro-regime
forces focused
their main effort against opposition-held districts of Aleppo City. This zero-sum
allocation of resources will not be alleviated unless an outside actor conducts
a major ground deployment – a step neither Russia nor Iran have been willing to
pursue to date.

Breakdowns in Command-and-Control

The Syrian
Civil War also forced the regime to surrender control over pro-regime forces on
the ground. The regime mobilized tens of thousands of paramilitary and foreign
fighters not beholden to the state in order to mitigate and reverse its
operational immobility. The regime directs this coalition through an
increasingly decentralized and ad hoc network of command-and-control structures
that grants expanded operational authority to junior officers in the field.
These structures have been coopted by local strongmen as well as Iran and
Russia.

The SAA
has fractured as a result of policies undertaken to survive internal security
threats. Former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad first implemented a system of
military decentralization called the ‘quta’a
system’ in 1984. This system assigned each combat division to a specific
geographical region, assigned it responsibility for local population centers,
and granted wide discretionary powers to the commanding officer. These ‘quta’as’
– or sectors – became fiefdoms for senior military officials, giving commanders
a stake in preserving local security at the cost of reduced dependence on the
state.

The regime
further task-organized its
maneuver units and consolidated loyal formations into larger units after the
start of the Syrian Revolution in 2011 in order to exert command-and-control
and improve their combat effectiveness during the Syrian Civil War. These
reorganizations extended as low as the battalion level with individual
companies, platoons, and soldiers being reallocated into new formations. Many
formal combat brigades and divisions no longer exist in 2017 as meaningful
frames of reference for operations on the ground.

The
regime simultaneously organized a network of paramilitary auxiliaries to
supplement its flagging combat forces. These paramilitary groups routinely
evade efforts by the regime to impose state control and instead remain loyal to
foreign powers, political parties, criminal networks, or individual
benefactors, further degrading regime command-and-control. These units closely
coordinate with the remnants of the formal military, blurring the lines between
official and unofficial combat forces. This fragmentation of command authority
granted the regime resiliency against immediate collapse at the cost of
receding state sovereignty.

Initial
efforts to consolidate these paramilitary groups under state control have
regressed since 2015. The regime formed the National
Defense Forces (NDF) in 2013 with assistance from Iran in order to bring
disparate popular committees, criminal networks, and self-defense groups under
a military umbrella. At its peak, the NDF incorporated between 80,000
to 100,000 fighters focused on rear-area security and static defense, freeing
valuable manpower for other offensive operations. Over the past year, the NDF
reportedly fragmented and reverted to local groups outside the formal command
structure as economic turmoil hampered the regime’s ability to match
the salaries offered by foreign or private actors.

Paramilitary
groups linked to a wide variety of benefactors, causes, and ideologies fight
alongside the regime, generating intense friction with the state. These
factions include political militias organized by the Syrian Arab Ba’ath Party and
Syrian
Social Nationalist Party, Palestinians,
private militias run by wealthy
businessmen, and tribal organizations. Several branches of the state security
apparatus – including the four rival intelligence agencies – also recruit their
own paramilitaries. These groups reportedly engage in a wide
range of criminal activity that exploits local populations to
bolster their meager incomes. Paramilitary groups have even engaged in direct
confrontations with state authorities. For example, Assad reportedly ordered the withdrawal of
nearly 900 individuals from two prominent paramilitary groups - the ‘Desert
Hawks’ and ‘Naval Commandos’ - after their forces allegedly interfered with a
presidential convoy in Latakia City in February 2017.

Foreign Dominance

Iran
currently provides the high-end manpower capable of securing significant gains
for pro-regime forces on the ground. Iran operates a coalition of nearly 30,000
fighters that includes the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Lebanese
Hezbollah, Iraqi Shi’a militias, and Afghan Shi’a fighters. These forces likely
constitute one-sixth to one-eighth of total pro-regime forces – this ratio only
increases when compared to the small number of combat-effective regime units.

Iran
has deployed at least 7,000 of
its own fighters to Syria. These forces include elements of the IRGC-Ground
Forces and Iranian ‘Artesh’ that represent the first expeditionary
deployment of conventional forces by Iran since the Iran-Iraq War. Iran also
leads a coalition of roughly 20,000
foreign fighters in the country, including 6,000
to 8,000 from Lebanese Hezbollah, 4,000
to 5,000 from Iraqi Shi’a militias, and 2,000
to 4,000 Afghan Shi’a fighters. These totals exclude the wide array of
local paramilitary groups supported by Iran in Syria. This coalition provides a
disproportionate amount of the combat-capable infantry used in major pro-regime
operations. For example, Iran and its proxies reportedly provided more
than half of the 10,000 fighters assembled for the year-long regime campaign
to seize Aleppo City in 2015. These forces also played key
roles in the two operations launched to recapture Palmyra over the past
year.

Iran
has created a self-sufficient method of combined force operations that excludes
a major role for the regime’s military. The IRGC has developed a model of cadre-warfare
that allows Iran to implant military leadership over a base of irregular
fighters that it organizes, funds, and equips in a host country. Iran operates
sophisticated infrastructure – including a strategic
air bridge from Tehran to Damascus via Baghdad - to train, equip, manage, and
redeploy these forces across the region in line with its own strategic
priorities. The IRGC – Quds Force and Lebanese Hezbollah lead key operations
and relegate the SAA to providing heavy support including artillery, armor, and
airstrikes to foreign infantry forces.

Iran
gradually co-opted the regime’s remaining command structure as its combat
forces became the most asymmetric advantage in the conflict. Iran reportedly
assumed control of key operations rooms and ad hocheadquarters in both Latakia and
Dera’a
Provinces in 2015. The transitions were accompanied by widespread claims of purges,
executions, and transfers of low-ranking regime officers to other fronts. The takeover
also extended to senior officers who resisted the expansion of Iran’s influence.
In the most prominent example, Syria Political Security Directorate Head Rustom
Ghazalah died in April 2015 following a severe
beating rumored to be related to his resistance to the increased Iranian deployment
to Southern Syria.

Iran also played an integral role in the development of pro-regime
paramilitary groups ostensibly under regime authority in order to establish the
long-term infrastructure of a ‘Syrian
Hezbollah.’
Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah played a foundational
role in building the NDF based on the Iranian ‘Basij.’ Iran also oversaw
enlistment campaigns across the country – in some cases competing
directly with the regime for new recruits by providing competitive
salaries and military equipment. Iran nurtured its pool of future manpower
through religious outreach including funding for
theology schools and revolutionary youth groups among Alawites on the Syrian
Coast. Iran worked to develop independent infrastructure against
Israel on the Syrian Golan Heights as demonstrated by the deaths of key Lebanese
Hezbollah operatives such as Jihad
Mughniyeh in January 2015 and Samir
Kantar in December 2015.

Russia,
by contrast, strengthened the regime’s military and security services’ formal
structures. Russia provides the majority of its military aid, including
advanced weaponry and air support, directly to the SAA. This support included the
provision of advanced armored vehicles such as T-90
Main Battle Tanks and BTR-82
Armored Personnel Carriers to elite units such as the Syrian ‘Tiger Forces’ and
Republican Guard. Russia took great pains to present its military engagement as
a bilateral agreement between two legitimate governments against terrorism
through high-profile
basing deals and public
coordination with senior regime officials. These efforts complement the actions
of Iran in Syria while simultaneously allowing Russia to develop an independent
partner for long-term influence.

Russia
also tried to reconsolidate paramilitary groups under state control via new
headquarters and command structures. Russia drove the establishment of the Fourth
Storming Corps in Latakia Province in October 2015 and the Fifth
Storming Corps in Damascus in November 2016. These new corps structures reportedly
intend to consolidate paramilitary groups under state control with Russian
command-and-control support, funding, and equipment. The
Fifth Storming Corps spearheaded the
pro-regime offensive that recaptured Palmyra from ISIS in March 2017 with
backing from Russia, Iran, and Lebanese Hezbollah.

Russia
has nonetheless eroded the regime’s sovereignty. Russiatook control
over major operations in Northern Syria in late 2015, including key battlefronts
in Latakia and
Aleppo
Provinces. Russia’s increasing influence in operational planning and strategic
decision-making generated noticeable
changes in pro-regime campaign design, including the use of frontal
aviation and major cauldron battles against the opposition in Aleppo Province. On
the diplomatic front, Russia attempted to impose its own constitutional
draft upon both the regime and opposition in order to resolve the Syrian
Civil War under favorable terms that preserve its long-term basing rights on
the Syrian Coast.

Implications

The
U.S. will not find a partner willing or capable of advancing its national
security interests within the pro-regime coalition. Pro-regime forces are not
capable of independently expelling ISIS and al-Qaeda from Syria. Iran currently
provides the high-end combat units that lead pro-regime offensives on the
ground. Any policy that leverages Russia and Assad against Salafi-Jihadist groups
will thus empower Iran in Syria by default. Conversely, any effort to drive
a wedge between Russia and Iran in Syria in the near-term will also fail
due to the critical role of Iran in supporting both parties. Russia has no
proxy in Syria without Iran. Russia and Assad cannot afford to divorce
themselves from Iran even if they intended to do so. Neither Russia nor Iran
requires an end to the Syrian Civil War or the defeat of ISIS in Syria. Rather,
Russia and Iran have consistently intervened in the conflict in order to
suppress the opponents of the regime, enhance their own regional freedom of
action, and oust the U.S. from the Middle East. Their public appeals for political
and military cooperation with the U.S. are disingenuous and unconstructive. The
U.S. must focus on regaining leverage and extracting meaningful concessions
from the pro-regime coalition rather than surrendering to the interests of
strategic adversaries for unsustainable gains against ISIS and al-Qaeda.